My daughter set up an account on raiseme. I am not sure if it is purely data mining. I believe 2 of the colleges she wishes to apply are on there. They are Northeastern and Mount Holyoke.
Has anyone used raise me for these 2 colleges? Does anyone know if the money raiseme estimates her is more or less the same as those colleges would grant her in merit aid anyway?
I believe one cant stack the merit aid. It is one or the other.
Following as I have Never heard of this and am curious!
From what I have read on CC about the raiseme program, I think you are correct. Raiseme is the minimum, but I’ve not seen anyone report that raiseme got them more money than they would have received directly from the school’s merit aid program.
I guess the benefit is that you see the minimum and know to expect that amount. If you don’t receive that amount, you can follow up with the school and ask where the money is in the FA package.
We only have one school on our list that uses Raiseme. When we run the Net Price Calculator on the schools website it comes up with 5K in scholarships and institutional aid, and our Raiseme amount is at $3600 so it’s not going to mean anything as it’s just a guarantee he’ll get that much and we already know he’s getting more. I’m still going to bite and make sure he submits it though.
I hadn’t heard of RaiseMe until last week, when I saw that Wayne State University has partnered with them for their new free-tuition for Detroit students program. Students are required to use RaiseMe in order to qualify. That intrigued me, so I did some investigation. I still don’t quite get RaiseMe or what colleges hope to achieve using it. For the WSU program, it seems to be data mining, but I think it’s for reasons such as trying to figure out their potential students & what programming they will need to put in place to accommodate them. For other schools, it seems like a way to get students interested in the school who might otherwise not be. If you are full pay, I assume some of the schools will give the student money they might not get otherwise … for example, a good-but-not-great student might get some free money through using RaiseMe, when he might not have been awarded any aid without it. Can’t hurt!